Indian artist Arunkumar HG has created a somewhat tongue-in-cheek calling out of our throwaway, waste-producing lifestyles with a shoreline sculpture made from nearly 70,000 bottle screw caps. The artist amassed the collection from his neighborhood over the course of a year, carefully stacked the caps, and connected them in vertical configurations using steel filaments.

The Eiffel Tower planted on the Bavarian Alps in Germany where the Neuschwanstein Castle stands (Courtesy DesignCrowd.com.au)

When it comes to a famous landmark, to what extent does locale add to its majesty? An inventive design competition posted to Australian virtual design studio DesignCrowd explored this question with a challenge to designers to reposition the world’s most hyped monuments in all-new locations using high-resolution images.

New gallery by SANAA. (Courtesy SANAA via Art Gallery of New South Wales.)

Tokyo-based architecture firm SANAA has won an international competition to design a new modern wing for the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. The firm beat out the likes of David Chipperfield, Renzo Piano, and Herzog & de Meuron for the commission, know as the “Sydney Modern Project.”

The most famous architect in the world agrees that his latest building kind of looks like a crumpled brown paper bag. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing, said Frank Gehry, the creator of the very wavy, very paper bag-y Dr. Chau Chak Wing Building at the University of Technology, Sydney. “It is a container, maybe it is a brown paper bag,” said the starchitect at the building’s recent opening. “But it is flexible on the inside; there is a lot of room for change and movement which I think in the world today is essential.”

Following it’s opening in 2009, urban planners all over the world have been keen on acquiring their own versions of New York’s much-lauded High Line. Sydney is the latest city to enter the fray, selecting a 500-meter stretch of abandoned railway as a foundation for the Goods Line, an urban park and public space, replete with bike paths, study pods and outdoor workspaces catering to local students.

The Sydney Opera House, now a symbol of Australia and the Sydney Harbor, is 40 years old this year. (Courtesy Matt Norris / Flickr)

A big “Happy 40th Birthday” goes out to the Sydney Opera House this year, which is still looking good in its middle age. Completed by Danish architect and Pritzker Prize–winner, Jørn Utzon, in 1973, the iconic performing arts center is now an internationally renowned late modernist architectural marvel. Originally, when Utzon entered the 1956 New South Wales Government sponsored competition to envision two performance halls on the Sydney Harbor, his design was discarded. However, his “entry created great community interest” and the jury was persuaded to choose him as the sole architect in the ambitious project.

Utzon received the Pritzker Prize in 2003 and the building made the World Heritage List in 2007. The architect died one year later in Copenhagen but his vision lives on. Against a Sydney Harbor backdrop, the Sydney Opera House has become a graceful, yet dynamic symbol of Australia.

Developers Lend Lease will lead the creation of the 2.15 million-square-foot project called “Darling Harbour Live” that will include a red carpet entertainment venue, an exhibition center, a new residential neighborhood called The Haymarket —designed by Denton Corker & Marshall —and a 900 room hotel for which OMA led the conceptual design. As part of this urban renewal plan, there will also be a focus on outdoor public space with a renovated Tumbalong Park, which can accommodate 25,000 people as an outdoor event space; a new Harbourside Place, a palm tree lined street alongside the crystalline ICC; a Chinese Garden Square; and Haymarket Square, a central meeting spot for the Haymarket neighborhood with outdoor tables and seating.

The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat held its 11th annual awards symposium Thursday, bestowing architect Helmut Jahn and structural engineers Charles Thornton and Richard Tomasetti with lifetime achievement recognition and awarding Doha Tower the title of 2012’s Best Tall Building.

You better run, you’d better take cover! Frank Gehry‘s is heading down to Australia with a half twisted-brick, half glass-shard business school for the University of Technology, Sydney. The $150 million project draws its inspiration from a tree house, or as Frank puts it, “a trunk and core of activity and… branches for people to connect and do their private work.”

If you find yourself in Sydney, Australia before June 10, you might want to run by the Customs House to see Green Void, which has an earlike affinity to Marsyas, Anish Kapoor’s 2002 sculpture for the Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall. Read More